VividSimon Simply Perfect

Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

punishmentpark Stunningly beautiful. This animation seems to be made of a large series of paintings, and in each painting there are some animated details. Story-wise, I could only make out that the old man had an affair before he got married long ago, and the woman of that affair comes back (as a mermaid) to haunt his son in the present day. It turns out that the young man is not his son, but an apprentice - the old man is a monk. I don't understand how he would have been married in that case, but I must have missed some details there.Despite the fact that this an impeccable piece of animation, somehow not all of it worked for me. Maybe the subject matter stayed too much on the safe side of a fairly simple cautious tale, or even a fairytale, but I've very much enjoyed it nonetheless.A big 8 out of 10 feels like the minimum rating I must give this.

Rectangular_businessman "Rusalka" was another short masterpiece directed by the great Aleksandr Petrov: Just like his other works, "Rusalka" possess a magnificent beauty that hardly could be compared with anything that I've seen before, expressing with lyricism and captivating imagery a fascinating story.The quality of the animation is outstanding beyond words, being every single frame of this short a great work of art, with an almost dreamlike use of colors and shapes, capturing perfectly well the equally ethereal nature of the plot.This is a great animated film, that has to be seen to be believed. My review isn't enough to make this short any justice, being my main recommendation to any viewer to see with their own eyes "Rusalka" to confirm how wonderful it is.

Nyssa K A wonderful fantastic animation movie! I read some reviews here that describe Aleksandr Petrov's films as great on the eyes, but lacking good plot and being hard to follow. I have to disagree with this assessment! It's just that Aleksandr Petrov is Russian and in his animations there are allusions, characters, and motifs that are rooted in Russian culture and are much more familiar to a Russian person than a foreigner watching the cartoon. Non-Russians just may need a little outside help to understand the plot (just like people often read a libretto before watching an opera to make sure they understand the action happening on on stage).!!!A warning that spoilers do follow from this point on!!! (Do not read beyond this point, if you do not want to read spoilers!) In this story there are two monks who live by the river. The old monk had sinned in his youth: he had romance with a young girl, had sex with her, but then married another woman thereby "dishonoring" the girl who loved him and trusted him. (We learn this from the flashbacks that the old monk has and how now he is praying to God and begging him for forgiveness of his old sins.) The dishonored girl committed suicide by drowning. The young girl's restless spirit had turned into a mermaid - an evil spirit who is out to take revenge on the injustice that was done to her in her life. She takes this revenge by seducing young men with her charms, and then leading them into the depth of the water and drowning them. (This kind of wandering evil-spirit of a girl who's life ended before her time due to cruelty of men is a common character in Russian folklore. She may appear innocent and charming, but that is just a ploy to trick the young man into following her.) Naturally, the evil-spirit mermaid goes after the young monk, who is the apprentice of the old monk (and is probably like a son to him). Once the old monk realizes what's going on, he knows that the young monk is about to lose his life to pay for his (the old monk's) sins. He knows he must protect the young monk. So he tries to do it through prayer and giving the young monk the cross. When that doesn't work (the young monk takes a boat out onto the water to join the mermaid there), the old monk throws himself into a battle with the mermaid and he dies in the process of that battle, but is able to save the life of the young monk thereby.So, as you can probably see, the story and plot of the animation are quite meaningful, substantial, and even powerful. You just need to be able to understand it to appreciate it and understand Petrov's work fully.

ackstasis I don't think I really need to tell you that 'Mermaid (1997)' is a visual masterpiece. This is, after all, Aleksandr Petrov, whose exquisite skill with oil paints on glass is unsurpassed by any animator ever to have worked in the medium {though I did recently discover a worthy rival in Alexei Karaev, with ''The Lodgers of an Old House (1987)'}. The wonderful thing about Petrov's work – from 'Cow (1989)' to 'My Love (2006)' – is that sense of timelessness about the animation, evoking the eternal bliss of our dreams and memories. However, his films are so focused upon visual storytelling that the stories themselves are often convoluted beyond comprehensibility, an issue not aided by Petrov's insistence upon adapting novel-length literature. The problem with 'Mermaid' is that it only allows itself ten minutes to develop a complex breadth of ideas, leaving the plot so vague and ambiguous as to be almost disposable. That said, this is not a film you're watching for its story, anyway.An elderly monk, doomed to a life of solidarity after a lost love about whom he still dreams, is training a young apprentice by the riverside. This young boy is overjoyed to discover a beautiful mermaid residing beside his shack, and the pair spend much time playing merrily in the water. But the old monk senses in this mermaid the spirit of his lost love, and strictly forbids the friendship. Everything that tales place after this is a little hazy, but there's an almighty storm, a vicious swirl of wind and water and a conclusion that sees crude wooden crosses mournfully lining the shore. 'Mermaid' provided the second of four Oscar nominations for its famed animator, though it lost this particular statue to Pixar, whose 'Geri's Game (1997)' is incidentally my favourite short film from the studio. Petrov would, however, snare the Oscar a few years later with his masterpiece, 'The Old Man and the Sea (1999).' However unintelligible the story, this is a marvellous visual treat that is worth watching at least twice.